The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (29 page)

“Are you going to try out for sumo wearing that?” Kenji joked when he stepped into the kitchen.

Hiroshi ignored him.

“You’ve grown so tall, Hiro-chan,” his grandmother fussed, pulling at the kimono and tightening the sash.

“I knew he would be,” his
ojiichan
added.

His
obaachan
laughed. “Even when you could see, you never paid attention.”

“Only to you,” his grandfather said, smiling.

Hiroshi laughed, too, said his goodbyes, and slid open the front door. Outside, he could still hear his grandparents’ teasing voices.

It had been more than a year since the dark day that Hiroshi first visited the Katsuyama-beya. Now, as he approached the sumo stable, he felt a knot tighten in the middle of his stomach, a reminder of the sadness he had carried with him through the gate the last time. When the smoke from the firestorm had finally cleared, people seemed to hold their breath in stunned silence as Japan surrendered. Then little by little, life found a way back. The first signs came when the birds returned, circling tentatively before landing on the charred remains of buildings or tree stumps. Every morning Hiroshi listened for their singing and squawking before he allowed himself to believe that things might one day be all right.

As he passed through the gate of the sumo stable, Hiroshi was astonished at the transformation. Signs of life were everywhere. Leaves had sprouted from branches, birds whistled through the air, and the skeletal frame of a new building was up, reminding him that this was once the sumo stable where Yokozuna Kitoyama trained to become grand champion. Hiroshi paused to catch his breath and tightened his sash, wishing his
ojiichan
were there with him.

“Are you here to see my father?”

Hiroshi turned around. He knew this young girl. She was with
Tanaka-oyakata the last time he was there. Only now she was taller and her hands were free of bandages. At twelve or thirteen she also seemed more self-assured. Next to her a younger girl stood quietly by, with strikingly beautiful iridescent black eyes. Both girls were dressed in light blue cotton
yukata
kimonos.

Hiroshi bowed.
“Hai
, I’ve come to see Tanaka-oyakata.”

The older girl shifted from foot to foot, eyeing him closely as if just recognizing him, her hands tucked in the folds of her kimono. “You were here before,” she began, but then looked at the younger girl and stopped.

“Hai,”
he said. “A long time ago.”

The girl appeared thankful he didn’t say more. She paused and then pointed toward the wooden building across the courtyard. “You’ll find my father upstairs in his office.”

“Domo arigato gozaimazu.”
He bowed low, then straightened and added, “My name is Hiroshi Matsumoto.”

A faint smiled crossed the girl’s lips. She looked up at him. “I’m Haru Tanaka and this is my sister, Aki.”

Aki bowed but remained silent, her eyes darting up at him again.

“You’d better go,” Haru added before he could say anything else. “My father doesn’t like it when his
rikishi
are late.”

Hiroshi smiled to himself. She thought he was a sumo wrestler. He bowed once more. When he reached the building, he glanced back to where they stood, still watching him. Haru already poised and graceful, older than her years, while Aki was the most beautiful little girl he’d ever seen; he could already see her resemblance to her mother.

Hiroshi pulled open the wide wooden door and stepped into the cool darkness of the building, inhaling the smell of smoke and earth. He felt a soft dirt floor underfoot, looked up at the row of narrow shoji windows above the wood-paneled walls. Pale streams of light fell on the white outlines of the
dohyo
in the center of the large, open room. This was the
keikoba
, he thought. To one side of the practice area was a tatami platform where viewers came to watch practice. He
walked carefully around the
dohyo
, behind which wooden stairs led to the second floor.

Tanaka-oyakata sat at his desk in the small, warm office. The door was open and Hiroshi was surprised to see he had shaved his head, which made him look just a bit more intimidating. His whole presence seemed to fill the room.

Tanaka-oyakata looked up and stood, greeting him with warmth. “Matsumoto-san, I’m happy you could make it.”

Hiroshi bowed. “Thank you for your invitation.”

“Please sit.” Tanaka sat back down in his chair and cleared his throat. “I hope all is well with you and your grandparents?”

“Very well.” Hiroshi was surprised the
oyakata
remembered he lived with his grandparents.

“Ah good.” Tanaka lined up a stack of papers on his desk. “Let me tell you why I asked you here. During the past year, my greatest hope has been to rebuild Katsuyama-beya again. As you can see, we’re proceeding slowly. About half a dozen of my old
rikishi
have returned since the occupation. They’re helping me to rebuild with what little we have. We’ve also begun training again on a regular basis.”

Hiroshi sat up straight, his fingers numb from gripping the arms of the chair, his heart racing at what this might mean. He heard footsteps on the stairs and saw Haru carrying a tray with tea. She poured a cup for her father and one for Hiroshi, glanced in his direction, and left without a word.

“How can I help you?” Hiroshi asked.

“I have seen the way you move, Matsumoto-san,” Tanaka said, his voice low and calm. He sipped his tea. “It was disappointing that you weren’t able to join the stable before the war when you were a boy. So, I’m asking you now, as a young man, if you still feel you have what it takes to be a
sumotori?”

At nineteen, Hiroshi hadn’t yet thought of himself as a man. Men were Tanaka-sama, or his
ojiichan
, or his father standing tall and determined in the black-and-white photo in the receiving room. But there was never a moment when he hadn’t dreamt of being a
sumotori
. He stood and bowed to Tanaka-oyakata. Without hesitation, he answered,
“Hai.”

Kenji dreamed of the masks once more. The war had nearly deadened his need for them, but when the surrender came, his imagination returned full-blown. He walked down the alleyway on his way back from school, the June sun pressing warmly against his back. Everything around him was a reminder of the masks—the curve along the table became the jaw of a
Kinuta
mask; the shape of the moon, a
Ko-omote
mask; a caterpillar, the brows of the
Warai-jo
mask. Nothing escaped his wonder and longing for their faces. And with the masks, his thoughts returned to his sensei. Kenji wondered where Akira Yoshiwara was, or if he was still alive. He turned down another alleyway, tracing the steps he had taken almost every afternoon for three years to the mask shop. The war
had
changed him. Before, he would have assumed his sensei was alive, but now he presumed him dead. At seventeen, Kenji sometimes found it easier just to accept the inevitable.

Kenji stopped in front of the vacant mask shop and looked into the window, but through layers of grime, he saw no sign of the colorful masks that had drawn him here so many years ago. During the bombings, as he sat in the dark, dank air-raid shelter fighting his fear of being buried alive, all that kept him calm was his vision of the masks.

Even now, the memory of that dirt hole made him shudder. The humid air was thick and stale with their labored breath as planes rumbled overhead. He tried not to breathe in too much air so his grandparents and Hiroshi would have enough. He had so much to say to them but didn’t speak—no one did—for the lungful of air it would cost them. Instead, Kenji closed his eyes and focused on the Egyptian death masks worn by pharaohs he’d read about, made of gold and embedded with priceless jewels, the high, straight nose, the closed lids so serene and beautiful in death. Would there be anyone left to make such a mask for him?

Kenji wiped the window with the palm of his hand. The pane he had shattered with the rock had been boarded over. He peered into
the deserted room and saw the rock still lying on the floor. He used to imagine he’d go back one day and Yoshiwara-sensei would be at work on a mask as if nothing had happened. Yet, every month since the war ended, he returned to find it was all a foolish dream.

Kenji was finishing his last year in high school. When classes began again in early 1946, he was happy to return to his old life as a student. He studied hard, and to his surprise, he scored the best in his class at the end of the year and won an academic citation that brought his grandparents great happiness. His
ojiichan
took to calling him
gakusha
, the scholar, which made Kenji uneasy. He knew his grandparents always wanted him and Hiroshi to have good educations, but now that his brother was training to be a
sumotori
, it was up to Kenji to finish school. He swallowed his dreams of carving masks and tried to live up to the title of
gakusha
.

Yet while Kenji focused his energies on his studies, the masks still haunted his dreams. Even if he should venture to open his own mask shop after graduating from school, could he possibly make a living? No matter how he tried to justify giving up college for becoming an artisan, he couldn’t.

Kenji turned away from the mask shop and hurried back down the crowded alleyway. He knew his
obaachan
worried if he wasn’t home by dinner. Now, as Japan stumbled, then crawled and learned to walk again under the Allied occupation, Kenji also had to find his way. Ever since Hiroshi had moved to the Katsuyama-beya, Kenji missed his brother more than he could say, but he knew his grandparents were delighted. Proud. Everyone was proud of Hiroshi, and so was he. That was the way it had always been, but every once in a while, Kenji felt something in the back of his throat, the bitter taste of jealousy. He hated himself for it, knowing he would never love anyone as much as he did Hiroshi. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder why life always fell into place for his brother, while everything was such a struggle for him. Since they were boys, Hiroshi was always the hero, Kenji the ghost.

But every night since April, when Hiroshi had packed and moved to the Katsuyama-beya, Kenji would close his shoji window and turn back to stare at the six-tatami-mat room he had shared with his
brother all his life. While it had always felt too small for both of them, it now seemed cavernous without Hiroshi. Kenji looked at the empty space next to his futon and wished his brother, his strongest connection to the parents he would never know, were still sleeping beside him.